I recently finished reading The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson. The poignant writing definitely provided me a soft cushion in which to land every morning as the ibuprofen kicked in.
Passages like this reminded me that pain if expressed well is fuckin beautiful:
Sometimes at dusk, when you were trying to relax and not think about the general stagnation, the Garbage God would gather a handful of those choked-off morning hopes and dangle them somewhere just out of reach; they would hang in the breeze and make a sound like delicate glass bells, reminding you of something you never quite got a hold of, and never would. It was a maddening image, and the only way to whip it was to hang on until dusk and banish the ghosts with rum. Often it was easier not to wait, so the drinking would begin at noon. It didn't help much, as I recall, except that sometimes it made the day go a little faster.